You Were a House on Fire | Harry Styles

thirteen

A few mornings following her incident with Lucas, Roe awoke with a pounding headache and the churning of her stomach. She groaned as she rolled away from the warm body next to her and pressed her face into her sheets, but it didn't help. Her jeans from the night before dug into her hips so sharply, that she could've sworn they replaced her skin there. She and Harry should seriously exercise more concern for their future selves when it came to late-night smoking.

Cracking an eye open, she scanned her surroundings to confirm her realities; a lengthy to-do list stuck to the upper corner of her mirror, River's trucks scattered on her windowsill, a horribly creased and annotated GED test prep book hidden under a pile of bills. In the stillness of the early morning, she watched his stomach rise and fall rhythmically. It felt so familiar, she could almost imagine a normal life with him- a house, a routine.

Roe sighed and rubbed her face. Her alarm wouldn't go off for another thirty minutes or so, not that the extra rest would actually contribute to anything. So, she lazily flapped her arms around the bed until she hit her phone and picked it up. Dead. Roe groaned again. Taking a deep breath, Roe pushed herself off the bed and sat on the floor underneath her bedroom window, unplugging Harry's phone and replacing it with hers. Harry now laid peacefully on his stomach, drooling onto Roe's sheets as if they were his own. The image shouldn't warm her chest. In fact, the thought of a future with him shouldn't be on her mind like it was- Lucas was right. What the hell did she even know about him? For being a mega-celebrity, he had few notifications on his phone. Curiosity danced through her fingers as she scrolled through them, though she cut her eyes to Harry's form every three seconds to ensure his obliviousness. At the top read a text from his mom asking to call soon- how sweet. He had a few snapchats from random names Roe didn't recognize as well as spam notifications from random shopping apps. What caught her eye the most was a text from 'Chrissy' that read "have you talked to your girl yet??". Odd, for sure, but in light of keeping her cool, she avoided jumping to any conclusions. It's not necessarily a bad thing, Harry talking about her to other people, but it brought an itch to her spine that Harry never mentioned Chrissy before.

The chime of her phone returning to life ended her near downward spiral of conspiracy, and she turned to swipe through her own notifications. Most were just junk emails or snapchats from Sara. So, she clicked it off again and stood abruptly, preparing for the day. Thank God it was a Saturday, Aaron took charge of caring for the kids and let her deal with work kid-free.

Roe tossed Harry's phone on the bed beside him just as her phone's ring tone broke through their silence. "Hey, get up, I have to leave."

Harry curled in on himself, seemingly opposed to welcoming the daylight. Roe immediately thought to ignore the phone call given the day's early hour and the celebrity in her bed, but once she read her best friend's name across the screen, she accepted it easily.

"Hey, Sara bear."

"Hey, babe, we still on for girl's night tonight?"

"Yeah, of course,"

"Thank god. You need to fill me in on that party you went to last week. I mean damn, you tryin' to hold out on me?" she teased. Roe turned the volume down, side-eyeing Harry.

"Yeah, yeah, I will. Anything else you want to pester me with at six o'clock in the morning?" she asked, lacking any ounce of menace.

"Just that we deserve an extra ten dollars an hour for working godforsaken hours."

Roe laughed, "So fucking true. Okay, see you tonight. Love you."

"Love you more," Sara sang before ending the call.

"I thought you were coming over to mine tonight?" a gruff voice mumbled from the bed.

"I don't remember saying that." Roe walked to her dresser, pulling out yoga pants and a Tears for Fears shirt.